CHAP. III.
His Concupiscence in the Church; the Ambition of his studies; and conversation amongst the jeering and abusive Wits.
ANd, then, thy mercy (ever faithfull to me) hover∣ed still afar off over me. Whilst I was dissolved into all impiety, pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity, which brought me, having forsaking thee, to low and treache∣rous vanities, and to the circumventing service of ma∣ligning Devils, to whom I sacrificed my villanies; though in them all I was still scourged by thee. Then I dared e∣ven in the celebration of thy solemn feasts, within the walls of thy sanctuary, to exercise my concupiscence, and to drive the trade of procuring the fruits of death: for which thou scourgedst me with grievous pains, but nothing comparable to my crimes, O thou my exceed∣ing great mercy, my God, thou, who wert also my refuge from those terrible mischievous† persons, amongst whom I gadded here and there with an outstretched neck, a run-away from thee, loving my own wayes and not thine, and loving that my fugitive Liberty.
Those studies, which were counted of great repute, had a strong influence upon me (as, fitting us for plead∣ing in the publick Courts of Justice) and I, had an am∣bition to be excellent in them; thus to become so much the famouser, how much by my eloquence more deceiv∣ing: so great is the blindness of Men, glorying also in their blindness. And, by this time I was grown a head-Scholler in the Rhetorick-school, pleased with self-con∣ceit, and swollen with pride; though much more mo∣dest, O Lord, thou knowest, than some others were; and far removed from those Eversions, the† Eversores made (for this cruell and diabolical name is, as it were, a badge of their witty urbanity). Amongst these I lived with a shameless bashfulness, because my self was not